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For new researchers
- Reflect on
the subject and nature of your research. Who might be interested in this?
What are your actual, intended or potential ‘spheres of influence? In other words who is currently
interested in your research, who would you like to be interested in it and can you think of
other people or organisations that might find it useful?
- Think
about how you could reach these audiences. Where do they source their information?
If you have a particular target audience you need to publish in what they read… A short piece in Farmers’ Weekly
will reach more farmers than an article in the Journal of Agricultural Economics.
- Re
(2) above. This is not an either/or. Doing both is of course the ideal. Get the maximum value from all the
work you do by thinking about how you could ‘repurpose it’ for
different audiences. Could you do a summary piece for the University newsletter? Could you do a short blog
about it? Have a plan for making the most of your research outputs.
- Don’t
forget the basics. Make sure you have a presence on your university website
– at the very least you need to have an up-to-date Departmental entry with your research and other academic interests,
publications etc.
- Go as ‘open as possible’. Upload your work to your institutional repository. Most people outside academe cannot access journal articles. They are all behind an extremely expensive paywall. Institutional
repositories get round this and make your work freely available (there are ways to do this without infringing copyright -
ask your librarian.)
- Think about professional use of social networks. Social Media, well used, could be very important in helping to spread influence and information
about your work. That includes Twitter, blogs , Youtube etc. There is a very good presentation
on Slideshare by Laura Czienierwicz about Academic Online Presence and how to cultivate it.
- There are also some excellent guides to using Twitter for academic
purposes . http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/files/2011/11/Published-Twitter_Guide_Sept_2011.pdf (Mollett, Moran, & Dunleavy, n.d.)
- The LSE Impact Blog is a great source of information on how to maximise impact as well as providing a forum for discussion. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/
( Also on twitter @LSEimpactblog )
- Think
‘Productive Interactions ‘. ( Molas-Gallart & Tang2011) Networking, formal and informal, is never a waste of time.
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